Showing from May 17: Iron Man 3 ***

Stars: Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle.
Director: Shane Black.
Rated: PG-13
Showing: Liberty Theatre (3D Version) - Fri-Sat 2:30pm, 6pm, 9:30pm; Sun 2:30pm, 6pm; Mon-Wed 2:30pm-, 6:30pm. Neptune Theatre (2D Version) - Fri-Sat 7:30pm, Sun 5:30pm; Mon-Wed 7:30pm.
Runtime: 130 minutes
Action, adventure, sci-fi

A little too much and a little not enough, director and co-writer Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 nonetheless has everything Disney and Marvel need to keep the Avengers superhero constellation shining and regenerating well into the 23rd century.

Here’s where we are with Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr. The climactic alien melee in last year’s all-star reunion The Avengers has left Stark nerve-racked and an insomniac workaholic. A new global terrorist, very much in the Bin Laden mold, has oozed onto the scene — The Mandarin, from the comic books. As portrayed by Ben Kingsley, with a strange, Laurence Olivier-in-The-Betsy dialect, you’re not quite sure where he’s coming from, either geographically or ideologically, which is the point.

The Mandarin goes about his business, destroying Stark’s home, slaughtering innocent civilians in the name of teaching America a lesson. Stark ends up in rural Tennessee, where in a gleefully cynical bid for a preteen audience (a few years too young for the violence in Iron Man 3, I’d say), Stark befriends a bullied eight-year-old (Ty Simpkins) who becomes his tag-along and sometime saviour.

I enjoyed a lot of it. But overall last year’s Avengers delivered the bombastic goods more efficiently than this year’s Marvel.